“

My voice should speak in action and teach by example those lessons I have learned through careful listening coupled with a willingness to understand without a vain need to be a prescriptive force.

“

How, alas, does one excavate oneself from such careening thoughts in which truth is temporary, suspect, and often useless?

“

“You’re a rapist!!!”

“

Most people would be offended by this.

“

Arguments have been given a bad rap. They’re contentious, we say. They’re hostile, oppositional. When we picture an argument, we see faces flush with anger, profanity, bile spewing. But this is all a silly prejudice that dates back millennia.

“

Can everyone be beautiful? And if everyone is beautiful, then is anyone really beautiful?

“

I truly believe that tolerance is dangerous.

“

And so I often find myself in conversations — with co-workers, family, friends, students, lovers — in which I instinctively reach for the word that is true, not for the word that is right.

“

Think about how many people feel as though ending their life is in some way more manageable or more appealing than living it. And then think about what it takes to get to that place.

“

You’ve never said the phrase “you just set the women’s movement back 50 years.”